Hart: Business precepts may not cure schools, but could help

By Patricia Kilday Hart |
March 31, 2012

I get a little uncomfortable in discussions about how good business principles could improve our public schools.

The prospect eventually rings false, as when some expert inevitably mentions how businesses measure the cost of producing widgets. Any public school teacher reading this right now will immediately recognize the flaw in this comparison: A factory manager gets to select his raw materials. Also, the half-made widgets don't need to be fed each day. They don't bring cellphones to the factory and play with them instead of compliantly becoming fully-functioning cogs in our economy. For all these reasons (not to mention adolescent hormones), measuring school "productivity" is a lot more complex than measuring productivity in private enterprise. And yet cynicism is not going to improve public schools, either.

Attending a seminar on school productivity at the University of Texas at Austin last week, it became obvious that the "let's-apply-business-principles-to-schools" crowd has a point that advocates of increased school funding should embrace: We need to figure out where and how money spent on education produces better results. And we need to embrace change. As former Houston Independent School District trustee Don McAdams put it: "With the proper incentives and freedom, the people in our schools can do amazing things."

Since personnel costs consume about 80 percent of our education spending, you can't spend smarter without facing head-on the controversial issue of how teachers are paid and deployed. While most states - including Texas - have prescribed schedules paying teachers based on experience, Roza presented research that suggested paying experienced teachers more isn't particularly helpful - nor the best option for teachers.

True, teacher effectiveness grows in the first decade of experience, but every additional year after? Not so much. And yet, we pay teachers badly until very late in their careers. Why not level out compensation over the lifetime of a teacher's career? Teachers would retire at a lower salary, Roza noted, which would lower pension costs. The trade-off would be better pay at a younger age.

Free thinking costly

What about allowing teachers to control their salaries by assuming additional responsibility?

A CRPE survey showed teachers overwhelmingly would choose a $5,000 bonus for teaching two more students per class, or forgoing the help of a full-time aide.

Texas school districts would have been able to explore such ideas under legislation proposed last session by Rep. Rob Eissler, D-The Woodlands, but his HB 400 never passed. (It included lots of other controversial ideas, like modifying the 22-to-1 student-teacher ratio for early grades.)

"We got great resistance," said Eissler, who said he had hoped to give more freedom to districts to decide how to best pay teachers. "Change is seen as a criticism. If you want to do free thinking, it is seen as an affront."

In McAdams' view, the Texas Legislature shouldn't be cutting school funding - as it did last session - unless it is also to look at new ideas like Eissler's. Cutting the state's contribution to public education, while maintaining highly prescriptive practices, puts school districts in an unfair bind.

Like Eissler, McAdams is a fan of allowing principals more freedom in how to pay teachers. In a roundabout way, rewarding teachers based on longevity means more dollars are flowing to middle-class schools, and less to poor schools. (Schools with the highest concentrations of low-income students often depend on fresh college graduates for staff.)

Tracking expenses

Before change will be accepted, the state will have to do a better job tracking actual dollars spent. "We don't know how much it costs educating this child versus that child," McAdams said. "There are districts that are more efficient. If we had more financial accountability, we'd be able to see why some are better than others."

First, we'll have to decide how to define "better." I have a sinking feeling that means more standardized testing, which is already strangling school innovation. It's possible that attempting to measure good teachers and good schools amounts to a search for the Holy Grail - an unattainable, mythological concept. Perhaps, but the search is honorable, and one that surely will unearth some valuable clues.